Glazer: Furor Over ESPN ‘Chink’ Headline on Jeremy Lin Overblown

ESPN had that headline up Saturday for only 35 minutes. They fired its author and suspended well-known personality Max Bretos for saying the following earlier live on the air: "If there is a chink in (Lin’s) armor, where can he improve his game?"

So is there a massive wave of racist hate towards Lin sweeping America?The answer is of course NO.

Lin’s Asian and very few Americans hate Asians.

Sure, he’s a minority and will always have some haters. If he were Latino, Jewish or a few other races, sure there’s always going to be some hate there. But these days, not so much.

The black pro athlete has that spotlight locked down today.

But Jeremy Lin is in the class by himself.

The guy’s on fire and until last night he had his team at 8-1, and beat world champs Dallas at home Sunday. By the way, Lin and crew lost to lowly New Jersey last night, though he had a decent game with 21 points.

In just two weeks Lin has shown he is a top player in the league, with all kinds of odd records for a short stint and scoring in the mid 20’s a game with 8-plus assists etc. Records for a first time starting guard in the NBA.

However its been just TWO WEEKS…

Yes, the guy is outstanding and will help make his team one of the best this season. Before Lin showed up, the Knicks were at best average, led by a wounded Carmelo Anthony who returns soon.

Suddenly the Knicks have joined Miami, Chicago, the LA Clippers, Dallas and Oklahoma City among the elite teams in the NBA. They replace the Lakers, Spurs and Boston…all aging teams falling from grace.

With Lin now the NBA is solid behind the NFL as the number two pro sport in the USA.

That’s right, ahead of baseball. TV numbers have soared.

So why the pretend hate towards Lin?

Because it makes for good media. He’s the real deal, a true Rocky. He’s a graduate of Harvard, where few athletes do well in the NBA. He’s Asian, and they usually are not hot shooting guards in the league.

Actual racist feelings remain for black pros who make millions, have little education and come from bad areas.

Murder, huge drug deals, dog torture, beating their wives….on and on. Many black athletes make millions each year and still can’t behave. So yeah, they bring out a lot of white people’s racist feelings.

Asians (outside of LA gangs) are not too caught up in big time crime. They don’t show up in the newspaper every day doing bad things. In fact, it’s rare. They’re also stereotyped as good citizens, well educated, strong in business and MATH..ha.

But we generally admire them – we don’t hate them.

Yes, I know about Vietnam and Korea, but that was a million years ago. Maybe Lin and others will set a good example for the rest of minority players in the NBA and NFL.

No one thinks there is rampant hate towards Lin. Chink is a racist term and shouldn’t be used. Like when Howard Cosell called Alvin Garrett a little monkey and got in trouble for that. It was a term he had used for smaller white players as well and I don’t think Cosell was racist, but we live in a society that IS rampant with racism, and the media especially need to be careful about what they say.
And check your facts: ‘the Knicks were at best average, led by a wounded Carmelo Anthony who returns soon.’ Carmelo played 38 minutes in last night’s loss.

Aside from extremists, there isn’t anyone that “hates” any ethnic group. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t racism. That’s been a big mistake of the left, equating all racism with “hate” when a lot of it is just dumb ignorance. I thought SNL nailed it perfectly in their opening sketch last weekend.

What kinda irritates me as an Asian-American is how everyone is fawning over Lin because he’s a “smart” player (and sure he is, he went to Harvard) while downplaying his athleticism as he crossover dribbles against John Wall and dunks on him. That’s not all smarts.

Chink in the armor, misunderstoodA chink in the armor was never ever aimed at Asians. Its been used in this context as a play on words. Originally, it was used to describe a vulnerable area, as in “Attempting to be a Scribe is the chink in Craigs’s armor”. This phrase uses chink in the sense of “a crack or gap,” a meaning dating from about 1400 and used figuratively since the mid-1600s. “Chink” as a derogatory Asian term didnt come for a few hundred more years. So, people using that are trying to get a cheap laugh from a play on the phrase even though it wasn’t ever aimed at Asians in any way.
But again, Chris Rock can say he wants ALL crackers dead…. and makes $75K for that nights performance and its funny. Its funny to me, its funny to most people. Whites dont seem to fall into the catagory even when you’re saying they should be dead. But, a misused phrase by an ESPN writer = FIRED.
Once again, selective racism.

You can’t seriously be suggesting that the ESPN writer didn’t think that the word ‘Chink’ might be taken in a bad light? Regardless of how he meant it, he is fully aware that Lin is Asian and that Chink is an offensive word.

The final arbiter…political correctness, the bottom line or the individual? That depends; as another shoot first and consider the ramifications later type named ‘Dirty Harry’ said, “a man has got to know his (and his employer’s) limitations.”

Case ‘chink’, was it an innocent remark or a calculated statement i.e., double entendre by intent? I wouldn’t have written/spoken it at minimum because of the likely uproar the writer/speaker should’ve been polished enough to anticipate. Entertainment realm ESPN etc., when boundaries are left open to interpretation supposed professionals, common sense goes out the window sometimes, as in ‘stuff happens’ (Imus “nappy headed” ho’s” comment a few years ago comes to mind.)

Interpretation is(was) also not merely limited to words, but image.

I remember when the Chiefs arrived in KC in 1963 they used a logo of what appeared to be a native American running through a six-state area, a football under one arm & a tomahawk in hand the other… was that racist? Some thought it was – it was replaced a few short years later, the times they were a changin’. It doesn’t seem logical an sports team would associate itself with anything but that which is inspiring (even Washington ‘Redskins’ – divisiveness via some intentional belittlement would seem counterproductive.)

To me the original Chiefs logo inferred strength, speed & prowess via an Indian ‘Brave’ (hardly a putdown; why would ownership of a white business want to imply something remotely to do with an not too distant past, such as say, the scalping of persons most often white in skin tone, who also happen to be a team’s dominant fanbase? Had that been ownership’s intent, would tilt toward bad taste in my opinion, not mere subjectivity.)

If (as rumored) H. Roe Bartle was the inspiration the team name, perhaps the logo should have depicted the Mayor smoking a cigar, which he favored to partake of (perhaps only fortunate timing a thence nascent anti-smoking lobby and/or American Cancer Society campaign against tobacco use could not have prevented a caricacture of a person wielding a cigar, had that logo been the choice.)

Chief or Brave or Indian as such is not offensive at all in my opinion & of course a team is under no obligation to conduct a survey; too, I don’t believe there is any law that addresses who can/cannot have an opinion. I’m German: if a team wanted to call itself ‘The Krauts’, I could care less – I don’t bleed for my people as it were, but that’s just me. I don’t consider Krauts to be inappropriate but were a team named say ‘The Holocaust’, common sense should dictate it would not be the right name to embrace for civility sake. Maybe it’s just easy-goin me, but it’s not as if ‘German’ makes one a Nazi simply via inference. Do the folks in Dublin get all torn up when they hear Notre Dame refer to ‘The Fighting Irish’? There is a line in ‘there’ that really isn’t that fine or hard to find really; some people just want to push the envelope.